Ardem Patapoutian

Ardem Patapoutian (b. 1967) is a Lebanese-American molecular biologist and neuroscientist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.

Patapoutian attended the American University of Beirut before emigrating to the United States in 1986, which he accepted as citizenship. In 1990 he received a bachelor's degree in cell and developmental biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in biology. As a postdoctoral fellow, Patapoutian worked with Louis F. Reichardt at the Scripps Research Institute, where he received a professorship in 2000. Between 2000 and 2014 he had an additional research position for the Novartis Research Foundation, since 2014 Patapoutian has also been doing research for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Ardem Patapoutian researches the signal transduction of sensors. He was able to make significant contributions to the identification of novel ion channels and receptors that are activated by temperature, mechanical forces or increased cell volume. Patapoutian and co-workers were able to show that these ion channels play an outstanding role in the sensation of temperature, in the sensation of touch, in proprioception, in the sensation of pain and in the regulation of vascular tone. More recent work uses functional genomics techniques to identify and characterize mechanosensitive ion channels (mechanotransduction).

According to Google Scholar, Patapoutian has an h-index of 68,[1] according to the Scopus one of 63[2] (as of May 2020). He has been a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2016, a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2017 [3] and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2020.[4] In 2017 Patapoutian received the W. Alden Spencer Award,[5] in 2019 the Rosenstiel Award,[6] in 2020 the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience[7] and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology / Biomedicine.[8]